The Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) architecture provides a Content Directory Service (CDS) for content management in a network that includes multiple devices containing various content. A CDS allows a user to access the content in a device using content browsing features of the CDS, without direct interaction with that device.
A CDS for a device comprises a hierarchical structure including a container that maintains objects containing one or more items, and may include other containers therein in a hierarchical fashion. Each object includes a description having an identifier and optional metadata. The object may further include content or a locator for the content. The user can browse the CDS for objects.
A CDS also supports uploading and downloading of CDS objects. To transfer objects from one CDS to another CDS, the user searches/browses objects for transfer, and uses a CDS to transfer (e.g., import and/or export) those objects.
Such a transfer operation may be acceptable when a transfer occurs one time. However, a series of such operations on a regular basis is tedious, time consuming and prone to mistakes. For example, if a user desires to have the same music content in a mobile device and in a music folder of a media server, the user must browse objects via the CDS and determine which objects to transfer, and then perform the transfer. Further, in order to synchronize the CDS containers in various devices which the user desires to contain the changed content, the user must repeat these operations whenever the music content (object) has changed. The user must further take care to not introduce recursion, which occurs when devices involved in content synchronization copy objects from each other indefinitely. There is, therefore, a need for a method and system for content synchronization in a network, which address the above shortcomings.